(Less than) 24 little hours
by Mestizaa
Summary: Three things Robin Scherbatsky hates about Japan, one thing she likes, and how a visit from Barney changes everything.


**A/N:** I went to Japan for two weeks at the end of the summer. On the plane ride back, the only episode of HIMYM on the entertainment thingy was I Love N.J, you know, that episode Robin announces that she accepted a job in Japan. Coincidence? I think not.

I mean no offence to Japan. I had an amazing time there. It's a wonderful country, with wonderful people. Unfortunately, Robin didn't enjoy her time there.

(I should probably also note that I haven't watched the middle seasons of HIMYM in a REALLY long time, but whatever.)

* * *

**(Less than) 24 little hours**

1.

Robin is a giant in this country. She had always been tall (for a girl), but even when she was young, there had always been somebody taller, somebody who was freakishly tall. And then, at around age 14, boys started passing her, and she thanked God for that.

In Japan, she is the freakishly tall somebody. She's Marshall tall. Everything is tiny and cramped and she has to watch her elbow room in convenience stores if she wants to avoid knocking everything over.

(She learned that on her second day.)

Robin isn't sure if she's imaging it or not (she's sure she's not), but she has muscle soreness in her legs from crouching lower than what is ergonomically correct to sit on chairs and toilets.

She stops wearing heels by day 3, and she kinda sorta really hates that. She does hate it less than life with them. Life with heels adds more attention to her monstrous size and she really hates having to duck under doorways, having her head so close to the subway roof, and having people below her line of sight.

Robin hates how she is too big for the country. She hates how she doesn't fit. And she hates that there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.

2.

Everything is backwards in Japan. They drive on the wrong side of the road. Faucets open counterclockwise instead of clockwise. In Japan, people get on buses through the back door, and not the front and they pay when they get off, not when they get on. The wheelchair guy on the handicapped sign is flipped. And, most annoyingly of all, the emergency number is 1-1-9.

Robin hates these little changes more than the big changes. She expected the big changes. She expected the language barrier, the jet lag, the abundance of rice and fish at every meal. She didn't realize she would have to relearn her everyday habits.

She knows she'll get used to these eccentricities eventually. But they're stupid things, and she curses loudly whenever she finds herself waiting for the bus on the wrong side of the road, or whenever she accidentally sprays herself with the tap. And she flinches whenever sees handicapped signs, because it just looks _wrong _and _stupid_ and she likes the wheelchair guy better when he's looking the _right_ way.

3.

The ketchup sucks. It's sweeter than it should be and the texture is all wrong. The eggs provided at the hotel's buffet are pretty awful too (they are way too runny and impossible to eat with chopsticks). Robin thinks that maybe she could mask the terribleness with the ketchup. Nope. It somehow makes it worse.

When Robin finally gets her own apartment and doesn't have to live off of restaurant foods anymore, she is so ridiculously happy. She is especially happy about breakfast; the Japanese idea of breakfast is very different than hers. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't deal with the rice and the fish first thing in the morning. She really misses her bacon and her pancakes and her maple syrup.

In her own apartment, Robin can try to make her own breakfasts, but it's not the same. She can't even make a proper grilled cheese because the ketchup sucks and eating grilled cheese without ketchup is practically a crime.

(Except in Japan, apparently.)

* * *

1.

She loves the silence.

Tokyo is the biggest metropolitan area in the world. She thought that it would be like a bigger New York. Robin figured that Tokyo would have more people, more cars, more trains, and more noise.

She is pleasantly surprised.

The studio is super flashy, that god damned monkey is a pain in the ass, and those horrendous variety shows have way too much going on. When she manages to escape at the end of her day, she is glad that the noise pollution doesn't follow her all the way home.

The cars are silent. It's an engineering miracle. For a while, she was convinced that the cars didn't have horns. Unlike New York, they were so rarely used. On public transportation, people aren't allowed to talk on their phones and it is asked that they leave their ringtones on silent.

Not even vibrate, but _silent_.

It's wonderful. She doesn't have to pretend she's not listening to girls talking to their boyfriends, or overhear some mother yelling at her bratty children. She doesn't see anybody looking crazy when talking on a headset that she can't quite see, and it is absolutely wonderful.

When she gets home, she pours herself a drink and she boots up her laptop. She slowly sips her way through a pile of emails. Everybody wants to know how it's going, and Robin writes back that it's going great.

Sometimes she reads Barney's blog. (Most times, she reads Barney's blog.)

By the time she's done with that, she's done with her day. The commute is long, and her coworkers are loud monkeys (literally), and this entire experience has been such a shock to her system that she just wants to sleep. She sorta loves that nobody is around to call her lame for going to bed by nine o'clock, and she's glad that her friends aren't around to pressure her into making an obligatory appearance at the bar.

She loves that she can sleep. And then it's tomorrow. And repeat.

* * *

_...brought the sun and the flowers where there used to be rain..._

One day, Barney calls her in the middle of the afternoon.

Weird, Robin thinks. It's like 4am in New York.

"Hey Scherbatsky! Have I got a proposition for you!"

Robin smiles. She knew he would want something. He never calls just to say hello ."I will gladly pretend to be your long distance girlfriend. Put the girl on."

There is a slight pause. "Robin, you are a _genius._ _Why_ _didn't I think of that three nights ago_?" he exclaims indignantly. Robin imagines that Barney face palmed in shame. "But that's not why I'm calling."

"Oh?"

"Tonight, we are going out!"

"What?" This makes absolutely no sense. She must have misunderstood. The phone connection must be broken. This entire exchange is impossible.

"Robin, let me finish," he says and all her questions quickly die on the tip of her tongue. "I'm in Osaka, at a meeting at the Asia-Pacific Trade Centre. I can take the Shinkansen and be in Tokyo in five hours. By then, you'll be done work, we can go get food because I'm going to be hungry, and then we can hit up Pachinko, drink a little to much sake, and then head back to your place because I will be crashing on your couch. What do you think?"

Robin's head is swimming. "YOU'RE IN JAPAN AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?"

"Relax Scherbatsky," he says flippantly. (Or maybe his face is just really far from his phone. She can't really tell.) "It was an emergency meeting, very last minute. Tensions were rising and needed to be diffused before anything too terrible happened."

"Okay..." Robin shakes her head. She doesn't think she wants to understand. "I'll meet you at Tokyo station then."

"Awesome!"

"Barney?" she asks tentatively.

"Yeah?"

"It's going to be legend-wait for it-"

And dial tone.

Robin has always wanted to do that.

* * *

She waits around the train station for him. She underestimated how busy it would be. In her excitement, she had forgotten about a little thing called rush hour. People are darting in every possible direction and Robin amuses herself at how they seem to do it in some sort of organized manner. It's pretty fascinating.

(Man, how long has she been waiting?)

Finally, she catches sight of a blond head seemingly floating above a sea of (mostly) dark hair. She catches his eye, and a huge grin spreads across his face. A huge grin probably spreads across her face too, but she doesn't notice. She's too busy watching him from across the tops of people's heads.

(For once, she's glad she's tall.)

Finally, he's in front of her she's being enveloped in a hug.

"Dary," she tells him when they pull away. He laughs and high fives her.

"Oh, I've missed you." She's missed him too.

* * *

As promised, they go out to dinner, have a bit too much to drink, play some Pachinko (and lose terribly), and end up at her place and it's awesome.

They're laughing and ripping on stupid backwards Japanese things, and Robin is so glad that somebody finally _gets it_.

"But come on, there's gotta be some super awesome Japanese things," Barney says after she finishes long rant about the wheelchair guy on the handicapped sign.

"I guess," she grudgingly admits. "There's an arcade nearby that has whack-a-mole, but instead of moles, they're dicks."

Barney's out the door before she finishes her sentence.

When they get back to her place (for reals this time), Barney remembers that he brought her something. He presents her a giant bottle of Heinz ketchup with a bow tie around it. Robin is speechless.

"This should last you a few months. If it doesn't, you have a problem and may need an intervention."

When she finally remembers how to speak, she sputters, "How did you know?"

"Please. You're Canadian. For some reason, that has ruined your ability to eat a grilled cheese sandwich sans ketchup."

She's so happy about the ketchup that she lets that one slide.

She then proceeds to make them a batch of grilled cheese. Because grilled cheese is awesome and it's the best drunk food in the world.

(After poutine of course. But Barney tells her she's asking too much and that contrary to popular belief, he does have standards.)

Less than 24 little hours later, Barney is on a plane. Robin is thrown off by the silence that invades her apartment when he's gone. She sits on her couch, nursing a glass of scotch, and tries to decide what the hell she should do with herself because there is nobody here to bro out with and she is undeniably bored.

There is nobody sitting on her couch cracking jokes at her expense, and nobody there to drag her off to the arcade to whack dicks or play Pachinko ("because it's slots and pinball combined and is therefore inherently AWESOME.") There is nobody there to tell her stories about her friends, about that new girl Ted is chasing, or Marshall and Lily's lame couple behaviour. Nobody is making vague suspicious references about his potential involvement with the North Koreans. And worst of all, there is nobody there to give her a high five when she says something clever.

Barney was over for less than 24 hours and he ruined everything. And now, she's alone with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. Robin has never been good at self-reflection. (Lily once dubbed her the Queen of the land called Denial.) So on the occasion when Robin does try, she'll get it wrong.

(She's not going to think too hard about that.)

So she grabs her purse and leaves to play some Pachinko because she doesn't want that. There are a bunch of sad lonely old people there, and she totally understands why. Because it's slots and pinball combined and is therefore inherently AWESOME.

And loud. Slots and pinball are so very loud.

Robin likes the noise.

Silence sucks.

* * *

_...what a difference a day makes_


End file.
